Review of Composite Propeller Developments and Strategy for Modeling Composite Propellers using PVAST

A number of issues have been identified with the current Nickel Aluminum Bronze (NAB) submarine propellers, including vibration, electric signature, and possibly excess weight. A possible solution to all of these is to fabricate the entire propeller (or a significant portion) out of composite materials, because of the advantages these materials offer, such as corrosion resistance, light weight, tailoring of material properties, low electric signature and acoustic properties. This study represents the first of proposed multi-phase efforts to investigate the development of a Canadian Navy composite propeller technology in order to exploit the potential benefits that composite materials offer. Several successful small composite propeller applications have been developed worldwide. These include a modular composite propeller developed by the Swedish company ProPulse AB; composite propellers made by injection moulding by Pirhana (USA); and Comprop composite propellers developed by Composite Marine Propellers (USA). For larger scale applications, the Contur® composite propellers developed by the German company AIR Fertigung-Technologie GmbH appear to be the most successful composite propeller development and consist of carbon fibre-based composite blades fitted on metallic hubs. Several navies, including those of the UK, USA, Dutch, and Germany have undertaken composite propeller technology demonstration projects involving the design, analysis and manufacturing of composite propel